Published by Douglas Messerli, the World Cinema Review features full-length reviews on film from the beginning of the industry to the present day, but the primary focus is on films of intelligence and cinematic quality, with an eye to exposing its readers to the best works in international film history.

François
Truffaut’s 1979 film, the last of his Antoine Doinel cycle, is literally a
pastiche; but instead of borrowing from or imitating other filmmakers, he
steals pieces from the films of his own past, including not only the Doinel
works (Antoine and Colette, The Four
Hundred Blows, The Soft Skin, Stolen Kisses and Bed and Board), but from Day
for Night,and with references to
others of his films. This recycling of his previous films, which
is made quite clear within the narrative of the new adventures in the life of
his man-child, might also be compared to the metaphor that is at the heart of
this new film, Love on the Run. The
hero (Jean-Pierre Léaud) discovers his new lover, Sabine Barnerias (Dorothée),
after observing, in a restaurant telephone booth, a man arguing with his lover
over the phone and angrily tearing up a photograph he leaves behind. Entering
the booth, Antoine picks up the pieces and later pastes them back together,
eventually, falling in love with the unknown subject of the photo. After weeks
of searching, he tracks her down working in a record store, and after a few
visits, the two strike up a relationship which, by the time Love on the Run begins, has, like all of
Antoine’s previous relationships with women (his former wife, Christine [Claude
Jade], her assistant Liliane [Dani] and his childhood unrequited love, Colette
[Marie-France Pisier]), falls apart.

Complications—the signing of his divorce
decree from Christine, his promise to take his son Alphonse to the train, and
an accidental sighting of Colette—all appear to intrude upon his new
relationship, condemning it to failure; but the viewer also recognizes, even if
he has not seen the other Doinel films, that they are simply diversions that
the failed hero uses to delay and even scuttle his commitment. The fact that
Antoine, moreover, cannot bring himself to allow these consequential and
inconsequential events to intersect—except through art—makes it quite clear to
all of his would-be lovers that he compartmentalizing his life, using them for
his various childish needs—for a mother, nurse, confessor, and lover—that
impedes any wholeness in his life.

The autobiographical elements of film that
point to the directors own past are obvious, and Truffaut’s growing discomfort
with that is made apparent in Antoine’s own discussion of his fiction, in
which—although he uses events and individuals in his own life, twists events,
combines characters, and obfuscates in numerous ways—still reveals his
inabilities to create something original. What’s more, into the pastiche of his
own art, Trauffaut slips subtle cinematic references (such as the similarities
on the train with Hitchcock’s North by
Northwest), along with numerous red-herrings of plot developments that are
left dangling in mid-air (what is
the secret manuscript that Antoine’s co-worker asks him to lock away in the
safe? Why does Christine attempt to visit Sabine in her apartment? Why does
Colette, who has herself lost a child, become determined to defend a
child-murderer, and what does it have to do with Antoine’s story?) which make
for an often turgid tale that confuses more than it ultimately reveals. It is little wonder that the director himself
agreed with critics who found Love on the
Run contrived and narcissistic. Léaud, who knew this was to be his last
reincarnation as Antoine Doinel, later admitted to a great sadness while
filming the piece. Certainly, this work lacks the freshness so noted in many
Truffaut’s best works.

Nonetheless, there is something to be said
by laying all these obvious “pieces” of life and art out on the cutting board
in order to attempt to release the eternal child from the past that haunts him
with the knowledge that if they can be pasted back together in a slightly
different order, the future can be possibly redeemed. We may never truly
believe that the loveable but psychologically damaged Antoine can ever truly
stop running, that he can commit to a real relationship by interconnecting the
various aspects of his life. But at least, by film’s end, there does appear to
be some hope.

The sudden appearance of one of his mother’s
former lovers, Lucien (Julien Bertheau) who describes the “monstrously” anarchistic
mother as a “little bird” and takes her traumatized son to see her burial plot
in Montmartre cemetery, Colette’s analysis of his behavior and her generosity
of seeking him out to return to him his beloved photograph of Sabine, and even
Christine’s obvious love for the man she has divorced, all help Antoine to
return to Sabine, revealing to her his devotion and, at least, a promise for a
new future. It is as if Truffaut, himself, in pasting together all these
autobiographical-like images of his art (in the editing of the film, with which
he commented, he was pleased) has been able finally, in laying aside the Doinel
character, to move forward with a commitment to a new work evidenced in The Last Metro, The Green Room, and Confidentally Yours. His sudden death
prevented him, perhaps, from fully realizing the symbolic redemption of Love on the Run.